Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp, in full John Christopher Depp II, (born June 9, 1963, Owensboro, Kentucky, U.S.), American actor and musician who was known for his eclectic and unconventional film choices. He achieved perhaps his greatest success as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

At age 16 Depp dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. His band, the Kids, relocated from Florida, where he spent the majority of his childhood, to Los Angeles. In 1983 Depp married Lori Anne Allison, who worked as a makeup artist while he struggled as a musician. Allison had her friend the actor Nicolas Cage arrange for Depp to audition with director Wes Craven, and Depp made his film debut as a teenager eaten by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). He divorced Allison the following year.

Depp’s professional break came in 1987 with the premiere of 21 Jump Street, a television police series that starred Depp as Officer Tom Hanson, a young cop who frequently went undercover in high schools and colleges to catch troubled youths. The show was a hit, though Depp resented his promotion as a teen heartthrob. In 1990 he left the series and appeared in John Waters’s Cry-Baby and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, two films by maverick directors that showcased Depp’s range. Scissorhands began a long association between the actor and director that led to Depp’s appearance in several other Burton films, including Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); in the latter film Depp played the reclusive candy baron Willy Wonka. In addition, Depp provided the voice of the unfortunate groom in Burton’s macabre animated tale Corpse Bride (2005).

Depp continued to show his versatility with roles as a 19th-century accountant in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and as an FBI agent who infiltrates the Mafia in Donnie Brasco (1997). In 1998 Depp, a longtime friend and fan of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, starred in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a film based on Thompson’s pseudo-autobiographical novel of the same name; Depp later received top billing in another Thompson adaptation, The Rum Diary (2011). He interviewed gonzo artist Ralph Steadman, who illustrated much of Thompson’s work, in the documentary For No Good Reason (2012). Other notable films include Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999) and Ted Demme’sBlow (2001); while working on the former film, he met French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, with whom he had a long-term relationship (1998–2012) and two children.

In 2010 Depp portrayed the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, Burton’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Later that year he starred opposite Angelina Jolie in the thriller The Tourist. In the animated westernRango (2011), Depp provided the voice of the title character, a chameleon who becomes the sheriff of a colourful desert town. He then played an 18th-century vampire awakening in the 1970s in Dark Shadows (2012), Burton’s comedic adaptation of the cult-favourite soap opera of the same name. In The Lone Ranger (2013), Depp sported a headdress and war paint as the titular lawman’s laconic Native American sidekick, Tonto.

Maintaining his early interest in music, Depp played acoustic guitar in the film Chocolat (2000) and on the soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). His work as a guitarist also appears on albums by the Pogues and Oasis. He married the actress Amber Heard in 2015; they divorced the following year.